8 years ago
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Three-Year-Old Dead After He Shot Himself With His Mother’s Gun
Less than 20 states have enacted laws that would hold adults criminally liable to secure guns in a manner that would prevent children from having access to them.
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What an awful law. I had my own gun in my room since I was 13, and I knew the combo to the safe as well.
Teach your kids to respect firearms if you're going to have them in the house. If they're too young to learn, don't leave them lying around.
I own firearms and hunt on occasion and I would have to disagree that this law is terrible. Not all kids are as intelligent as you were when it comes to smart firearm handling, and not all parents are as good as your parents must have been to teach you to respect the firearm. We have the same law here in BC, and no one has a problem with it. Plus accidental firearm related deaths of children and even adults are practically non existent due to people taking the extra precaution of not leaving their deadly weapons all over the place.
I don't know, it just doesn't sit right with me to make legislation like this. I mean, did your parents leave plugged in power tools laying around when you were young because there wasn't a law to tell them not to? Knives?
Pots of boiling liquids (pdf warning)?
Cleaning chemicals?
Accidental gun deaths accounted for 505 deaths in the US in 2013 [source], and I just don't think that number is high enough to say that everyone must be forced to keep their guns under strict lock and key. I mean, according to that last source, that's just 0.3% of all accidental deaths in the US. It is one of the lowest cause of accidental deaths, just above "Cut/Pierce" and "Hot object/substance".
That's why I think this legislation is terrible. It's a huge invasion of privacy and gun rights for very little gain. The trade-off is too much, in my opinion.
How many kids are killed or disabled from accidental scalding every year? Your source doesn't say. Since boiling liquids is a common activity in cooking and cleaning it's harder to regulate. Clearly there doesn't seem to be a financial incentive to making tools for boiling liquids safer in the home.
I know there was a massive campaign to make people aware of the danger of hazardous chemicals around the home. I remember getting a sheaf of "Mr. Yuck!" stickers in school. Likewise there are awareness campaigns to make people aware of the dangers of guns, typically shouted down by guns rights activists lead by the NRA. Perhaps dangerous chemicals require more stringent regulation to make people more cautious about keeping them around children?
How many accidental gun deaths were there in Canada? The United Kingdom? Australia? Before you declare that this number is too low you should also account for the number of non-fatal injuries involving guns.
Gun rights is a hot topic, I agree. I don't think our culture would accept a ban, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest tighter regulations. Too many people are getting their hands on guns who shouldn't have them, from the mentally and emotionally disturbed to children who are too young or impulsive to know better. I think effo...
Read FullChildren specifically? I don't know, I couldn't find the numbers for it. This says 100/year all age groups.
The NRA is very active in gun-safety programs and proper gun-handling, especially with children. I don't know of a single firearm group that doesn't: it's a huge point in the gun community to emphasize safety above all other things.
I have no idea, would you mind linking me a source? Then take a look at this, it might have something to do with those numbers.
Your source contradicts that statement.
How many is "too many"? Any more than 0? My point is that the rates at which that is happening is, at least in my opinion, not enough to justify gun restriction.
I disagree.
Well this is certainly true. Much better to get the gun before you need it.
There is a parallel here that can inform gun control advocates around the sensitivity of the subject. A mirror to examine your advocacy in. It's reproductive rights.
Every bit as fraught as a ‘conversation’ about criminalizing abortion, any exchange you have about gun control is layered with subtext around who the Hell are you, what business is it of yours, what do you know about me, my situation, my self-discipline and my rights, and all the rest of that.
Casually opining on criminalizing reproductive choice is very, very much the counterpart to off-handed proposals about restricting gun rights. There's a an unthinking human failing at work in both of those cases. Recognizing that can only help you..
I think it's dangerous to assume your experience with firearms is necessarily representative. One of the defining features of children (including teens) is that they don't have the experience or judgment to understand what's a bad idea. Even when you give them intensive training on respect for weapons there's still the issue of impulse control.
Ultimately, the most reliable way of preventing accidents with firearms involving children is to keep them out of the hands of children. I'm glad you had a good experience but I don't see that as a reliable model for the rest of the nation.
I think Tawsix is right, though. All the stuff I've seen/heard/read/etc. from actual gun owners with kids ( and people who grew up around guns ) is exactly the same; teaching children to respect guns is the only way to keep them safe.
Maybe I'm biased, I grew up in a rural community and I didn't know anybody who didn't have guns. I hate to extrapolate my anecdotal evidence but I'm going to: I think there are many communities like that, and they have few if any problems with guns.
We don't disagree on the end, but rather the means.